Apple is reportedly building custom AI servers around future M8 Ultra chips, planned in two- and four-chip configurations, and is evaluating Nvidia's NVLink Fusion for high-speed interconnects between them. The project, said to have started roughly a year ago under former hardware chief John Ternus, aims to replace Apple's existing in-house connectivity tech, which is reportedly too slow and expensive for large-scale deployment.
Crusoe, the company behind construction of one of OpenAI's largest data center projects, has closed a $3.9 billion funding round valuing it at nearly $31 billion. The company is now expanding into factory-built, smaller-scale data centers alongside its large infrastructure work.
Al Gore, speaking with TechCrunch alongside Generation Investment Management's Lila Preston, argued that AI data centers' emissions are far smaller than critics claim, comparing them to landfill emissions and global air conditioning use. He said what worries him more are warnings emerging from within the AI industry itself.
CNBC's Jim Cramer said this week that despite growing safety concerns raised by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, he expects AI investment to keep accelerating because companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are generating too much revenue to slow down. After conversations with executives at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, Cramer said he remains bullish on data center component makers and cybersecurity firms like Palo Alto Networks, Okta and CrowdStrike.
Arm Holdings CEO Rene Haas told CNBC's Jim Cramer that his confidence in reaching $2 billion in revenue for the company's new AGI CPU has increased since the July earnings call. Arm first flagged $2 billion in demand visibility in May, double its earlier $1 billion estimate, but had held off raising guidance while working to secure sufficient manufacturing capacity.
Amazon received warrants to buy up to 1.69 million Generac shares at $200.93 each, potentially worth up to $8 billion, as part of a deal for Generac to supply backup power generators to Amazon's data centers. Generac shares jumped more than 40% in after-hours trading following the news, with initial generator deliveries expected to total $2.4 billion between 2027 and 2028.
A new report from the nonprofit Basel Action Network estimates that AI infrastructure will generate far more electronic waste than previously projected, potentially amounting to enough discarded material to fill 23 million shipping containers by 2050. Unlike earlier estimates that only counted servers and GPUs, this analysis includes power supplies, cooling systems, backup power, and networking equipment tied to data centers, plus a category BAN calls 'AI Waste Contagion.' The group attributes 15-20 percent of the world's projected 211 million metric tons of annual e-waste by 2050 to AI-related infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services has confirmed that customer data hosted in its Bahrain and United Arab Emirates regions was permanently lost following Iranian drone strikes on its data centers months earlier. An AWS status update posted September 15 said the company could not restore data in one UAE availability zone and across all three availability zones in Bahrain, though recovery work continues elsewhere.
A new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute finds that 53% of Americans are extremely or very concerned about AI's environmental impact, up from 41% a year ago. The rise is driven largely by Democrats, though the poll also shows widespread unease about the local effects of data centers that power AI and cloud computing.
In an interview, a Syensqo executive described a 'performance pyramid' framework, where commodity materials sit at the bottom and high-performance specialty materials sit at the top. He explained that AI's rapid advancement is piling on technical requirements—heat tolerance, purity, electrical performance, chemical and plasma resistance, long-term stability—that push semiconductor and data center materials toward the top of that pyramid, an area where Syensqo focuses its work.
Startup Rune has deployed a modular data center in southwest Texas that connects directly to a solar farm rather than the electric grid. It runs on solar output that would otherwise go unused, avoiding the need to construct any new power generation to support it.
Amazon Web Services has told customers to relocate their data away from its Abu Dhabi and Bahrain facilities, more than six months after drone and missile strikes damaged both sites during regional conflict involving Iran, the US and Israel. AWS gave no timeline for repairs, and Bahraini state media reported that site was destroyed by cruise missiles.
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